What if there's another backdoor lurking in your VPN software? Why are you more confident in your VPN than SSH? Of those two pieces of software, which do you think has more eyes on it?
I would prefer to see these things enforced by culture and norms rather than laws and licenses. I don't want to have to parse legalese as part of my role as an engineer. I don't want companies to have to hire more lawyers to verify they can use software I wrote. I want them to be able to just use it, then contribute back after they've experienced using it. I don't want a restrictive license may prevent them from ever even trying my software in the first place. I want culture and norms that encourage the company to contribute to the project, not laws.
He actively discouraged mask use. Fauci and the Surgeon General said wearing a mask was more likely to get you sick because you would touch your face more.
"You can increase your risk of getting it by wearing a mask if you are not a health care provider," Adams said. "Folks who don't know how to wear them properly tend to touch their faces a lot and actually can increase the spread of coronavirus," he added.
Regardless of what the science says, Fauci believed masks worked, and he engaged in a deliberate misinformation campaign with the goal of preserving PPE for medical staff.
People who have admitted publicly to engaging in a misinformation campaign are now considered to be the authorities against which dissenting views will be judged misinformation.
Sure it does. But lying about that as the reasons and saying masks don't work is misinformation. And that is what the government health officials said.
They intentionally engaged in a misinformation campaign. And now they are considered the authority against which any other opinion will be judged misinformation.
This is not what happened, not in the US anyway. Fauci, after the recommendations changed, admitted that masks were discouraged to prioritize them for first responders[1].
So we have government health experts publicly saying they engaged in misinformation. But they are the experts against which every other opinion is to be judged as misinformation.
This may be the only way to scale a service that is free to users. But once you are selling a product to paying customers, those customers need to be at a different tier with real customer support.
Those paying customers are already incredibly unlikely to be spammers. They cannot be handled the same way free accounts are.
Reducing the options to divine or arbitrary is a false dilemma. Math is discovered/invented by humans, but it is far from arbitrary.
A slave will appeal to society because society has the power. But if the society does not listen to the appeals of the slave, we can still judge that the slave is correct and the society is wrong. And that judgement is not arbitrary.
> "Rights are a societal construct" doesn't mean that nobody has a right to believe different things from society.
Unless society doesn't recognize your right to believe differently, no?
The is-ought problem does not rule out the existence of normative facts. It simply states that they can't be proven by positive facts. You seem to be trying to rule out the existence of normative facts by appealing to positive facts.
Having an opinion doesn't make that opinion fact. But if you say that one opinion is in any way superior to another opinion then you are recognizing that there is something to measure those opinions against. There is some truth that we are trying to discover through reason.
What grounds would a slave, living in a time and place where slavery is legal, have to argue in defense of their freedom?
If you are willing to recognize that society has had an incorrect view of rights in the past, you must recognize that there is a standard beyond society to appeal to.
Everyone who works on Linux must rebase and squash commits so that every commit builds and passes tests, and does a single thing. More about how Linux uses git:
In a decade there will be threads wondering why only big chain restraints are left. And they'll blame capitalism and cry for more regulation never realizing how their regulations are what made it impossible for independent shop owners to compete.
I think you're lumping contractual EULAs with technical limitations and they're not the same thing.
If I bought a system that I am technically able to install anything I want onto, I don't think courts should enforce a EULA that forbids me from doing so.
But that doesn't mean I think the courts should forbid the manufacturer from implementing technical controls to stop unapproved software from being installed.
Those are two very different things, and the courts should treat them differently.
For one, there are consumers who buy iOS devices explicitly because they are hardened against unapproved software. Comparing the amount of malware on Android with what is on iOS proves that this is not an irrational decision.
I don't choose to buy a device like that, but I don't want courts saying that companies are not legally allowed to make such devices.
Not all jobs or service contribute to society. But if you invest in a company that provides goods and services that people don't want, that money is lost and you lose your ability to invest further.
When government provides a service that people don't want, that service can continue indefinitely, especially if the few who benefit can contribute back to the politicians who keep it going. Lockheed Martin and Boeing can contribute to some politicians to make sure that wars continue and they reap back way more than they contributed from the taxpayer who's only option is to vote between two pro-war candidates. Those jobs making bombs for Saudi Arabia to drop on Yemen don't contribute to society, they are a determent to society, yet they continue without end because nobody loses on that investment as long as the taxpayer can be forced to pay for it.
Do you mean supply of credit? Because additional money wouldn't drive demand for credit, it would drive supply as those with money look for places to lend it.
If you are saying an excess supply of credit leads to financial crises, I agree with you. But the federal reserve that intentionally pumps money into the big banks to make credit easy is a far bigger contributor.
I agree that Milton Friedman had his flaws, one of which is this very topic, he never properly connected the federal reserve, money expansion and easy credit to economic instability.
Investing in companies is contributing to society. Government is not society. Investing in Walmart so that the rural poor have more access to affordable goods is virtuous. And a whole lot of the contributions to government are absolutely not. Like the money that goes to build bombs to kill people in Yemen, or the money that funds your local police department's efforts to suppress protests against their unaccountable violence.